18 December 2007

OK, the Radiohead album is growing on me, like fungus on long-forgotten leftovers in the back of the fridge. I listened to it several times over the weekend, and it is one of the better albums I've heard recently from what I only know to call "modern rock".

"All I Need" is a good track, reminiscent of "Climbing Up The Walls" although slightly less creepy. I like the resounding piano bass that drives the track, slowly taking over from the synth bass about halfway through, right before the final crescendo, which builds off of discordant piano comping into rather a nice climax. I particularly like this YouTuber's take on the song, paired with some interesting close-in video of plants and insects and the like:

This isn't necessarily a standout track, I just added it because of the neat editing of the YouTube video.

And on a more comic note, some months back I was exposed to some very, very strange music. The acquaintances that were telling me about this music were very serious about it, but I couldn't help finding it absurd to the point of hilarious. Yes, I am talking about Tanz-metal. Particularly Laibach and Rammstein. Watching some of their videos on YouTube, I am baffled by how they are taken as serious music. I'm not saying it's utter crap, I'm just saying that it is so spectacularly craptastic that it is brilliant in its crapliciousness. How can you take trashy Euro-electronica dance beats, combine them with deep, resounding spoken German that sounds like it is pulled from the audiobook version of Heinrich Himmler's autobiography. Throw in a video with uniformed band members strutting to the beat and the silliness is over the top. As mentioned, the silliness is sufficient to make it quite amusing in its own way, and I have to think that that was the original intention of the artists, but what I don't understand is the people that love the music in a very serious, unfunny way. Like Bootsy Collins, half the enjoyment is the silly over-the-top humour of it all.